After months in a coma, a 32-year-old city attorney is alive, awake and coming back.

1. XX POST-BULLETIN / www.postbulletin.com Xxxday, Xxx ##, 2004 ✩ POST-BULLETIN / www.postbulletin.com Saturday, September 4, 2004 9B
Local/Region
Physical therapist Neil Miller
issues a “tough-love”
challenge to Harris to hold
his stance as Will practices
standing at Saint Marys
Hospital. Nikka Harris
watches. Two weeks after
this photograph, Harris, with
help, walked the length of
the two bars — a distance
of about 10 yards.
Weekend focus
had in the hospital.” that. You have no problem telling tion you have to have at your ready
Will has had two seizures since, me.” recall. He doesn’t have that yet.”
but neither was a major episode That sort of cutting, jocular Will has nine months remaining
requiring hospitalization. humor zings back and forth in laser- in a leave of absence from his job.
like fashion on the therapy floor, an If he can’t return as a prosecutor —
On the long road back open, sunlit workout room and no one is counting him out of
Will was back. Or was he? equipped with stationary bikes, that — it’s possible a new spot, for
exercise mats and the chassis of a instance as a paralegal, might be
In movies, a person wakes from a
classic Ford Mustang. open for him, Adkins said.
coma as if from a nap. But in
reality, it’s not that simple. “It’s kind of a tough place,” Miller “He was well-liked in this office,”
said. “Tragedy and stuff all around. Adkins said, and he’d be welcome
When Will woke, he was inco-
But we have a lot of laughter.” back in whatever capacity he can
herent. He couldn’t speak for days.
If Will wants to get back to the come.
And when he did speak, he swore.
That, too, is common. courtroom, he’ll have to spend a lot Louise Harris knows her son is
of time in this room first. up to a challenge.
The nurses joked, “I hear your
husband was a sailor in a former He stands between two waist-high As a boy, “he took joy in difficult
life,” Nikka said. parallel bars, holding himself up on tasks,” she said.
quivering, knotted forearms. The Will was the bulldog of the family,
Then, Will struggled to regain a
effort shows on his face. Miller is the third child of four, who “pro-
sense of who and where he was. He
there. He has Will turn to face the tected his older brothers at school
was blind, but described the room
wall. from bullies,” she said. “Never a
around him as he imagined it. His
version veered from reality and “See that guy in the mirror?” stranger, very talkative ... He always
logic. For instance, he was bothered Miller said. “You look good, Will. had a soft side, even though he was
by the sound of the IV machine, That’s nice.” a fighter.”
and asked Nikka, “Tell that dude to Once done, Will sits back in his Life could never knock him down
stop smacking his gum.” wheelchair and theatrically fans his for long. He broke his arm once
Who, she asked? face. playing football. “It made him more
“That guy over there,” Will said, “Cool towel...” he murmurs. determined,” his mother said. “I Exhausted and frustrated, Harris catches his breath after a
“Oh, please,” Miller snaps in would sit on the bench, praying that physical therapy session.
“next to the girl with the ball.”
mock annoyance. he stayed on the bench.”
Random memories replaced
Then, the conversation takes a Will’s illness is the most difficult
reality. He imagined he was 23, a
serious turn. Will muses about episode in her family’s history, she
college student, and living in Utah.
raising a son. Caleb Denzel Harris said. Lady Justice
He asked Nikka, whom he then
called by his grandmother’s name, was born May 17, 10 days before “Just seeing him laying there,” looks on as
to bring him a computer so he Will and Nikka’s ninth wedding she said. “He was so puffed up. Harris makes
could finish a paper. anniversary. “It was not knowing, ‘Am I ever his way to the
But slowly his memory came “I wish I could walk around with going to be able to say ‘hi’ to my son courtroom for
back. Discharged from the hospital him,” Will said. again? Am I ever going to be able to a day of
on March 9, he still is staking claim “You’ll be able to,” Miller said. talk to him again?’”
observation
on the contents of his past, but the “When he’s walking you’ll be Nikka has had hard times, too. A last month.
gaps still loom large. walking.” 20-year-old brother died two years
ago in a hospital bed after receiving He hopes to
“There’s really no rhyme or resume his
reason for what’s there and what Every step a triumph a heart transplant.
isn’t,” Nikka said. “We thought we’ve had our share legal career.
But no one — not Miller, not Ful-
For example, Will doesn’t gham, not Nikka and not Will him- of tragedy,” she said.
remember their last apartment, but self — can promise that. And she knew from the start that
he does remember the sight of a The real prognosis for Will a life with Will would not always be
blue house that lies along his Harris, it seems, is that there is no easy. Their interracial marriage
former route to work. prognosis. Will already has beaten might not be accepted every place
He’s forgotten virtually everything the odds. Every step he takes now they’d live.
that happened to him in the two simply extends his own over- But “I never thought we would be
weeks before the seizures started, achievement. faced with this big of a challenge,”
but he recently recalled a long-ago But Will knows what he wants: He Nikka said.
dinner date at a restaurant on wants what he once had. The desire Whatever success Will has
Beale Street in Memphis. takes him back to the office a achieving his goals, he has already
“Oh, it was expensive,” Will handful of times a week. He puts inspired those around him to better
gasped. his nose in law books and watches appreciate their lives.
Most troubling to him, Will cannot the courtroom action. Will’s daily caregiver, 20-year-old
remember many of his co-workers. “I think sitting in the courtroom Genia Bronnerich, said Will has
He refuses to pretend familiarity, as and watching all the other attor- inspired her to make the most of
some have advised him to do. neys, it is going to just click,” he her life. Now she aspires one day to
“I feel fake doing that,” he said. said. start her own business.
“I’m not a fake person.” To some degree, his friends say, “He makes me feel like there’s
Will actually overestimates his hope out there,” she said. “He’s got
Tough love and exercise progress. a real good spirit about him. Both
Will mused about that during a “At times, he’ll come back (from he and Nikka are incredible
recent physical therapy session, in court) and talk to me about a DUI people. Some people have real good
the rehabilitation department on case and he’ll say, ‘Yeah, I could try hearts.”
the third floor of Mayo’s Mary Brigh that,’” Magnuson said. “And there’s Magnuson, too, said he treasures
building. Harris attends therapy other times he’ll come back and say, the time spent with his children,
sessions three times a week. ‘I don’t remember what a Rule 5 or ages 8 and 3, because “it could be
“Just tell them it’s nice to see a Rule 8 is.’” gone in a day.
them,” said Neil Miller, Will’s thera- As a prosecutor, Magnuson said, “Every night we’d say a prayer for
pist. “And if it’s not nice, tell them “there’s a huge amount of informa- Will,” he said, “and we still do.”